4 ms·

It looks like the update is mostly with photos, but I would really prefer an update to the tagging system. Easier control of who is allowed to tag you, what the

It looks like the update is mostly with photos, but I would really prefer an update to the tagging system. Easier control of who is allowed to tag you, what they can tag, and who is allowed to see it.

gte910h 16y ago
I think there should be a couple use cases facebook always protects from, and proves that they aren't going to hurt the person. Here is one: "Mary is an abused spouse, beaten inches from death once upon a time by her abusive husband. She has since left him and moved to another city entirely, in hiding." Nothing in the system should allow any information about Mary to leak out. Not pictures of her, not her updates, not her level of participation in the site even. Your tagging is broken if you allow her to be tagged or captions to point her out.
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  I think that's very unlikely to happen. People who hadn't been abused would use it widely. Facebook, like Google, wants you to spend as much time as possible on Facebook, which means moving as much as your life into Facebook as possible and making things about others public by default, because that translates to more pageviews. Facebook makes money selling ads, so the more pages you view the more ads they sell. This is their principal motivation. Keeping things locked-down goes against both precedent that Facebook itself has set and the easy way to get more pageviews. There is probably a market for such a locked-down social network for people in witness protection or secret agents, but I don't think Facebook is very interested in the space.
  - moultano 16y ago
    Your argument strikes me as knee-jerk cynicism. Facebook wants to be around for a long time. Facebook wants people to get value out of their site. This isn't a get-rich-quick scheme where the objective is to strip-mine their users. A necessary condition for Facebook making any money is that people enjoy their service. If they don't implement it, it's because they don't think it'd be valuable to enough people to be worth the opportunity cost of having people implement it, not because they think it would hurt ad revenue. It seems to be a popular sentiment that any ad-supported company hates their users, and I don't get it. It's true for spam but it isn't true for companies that want to be around for more than a year.
    - chopsueyar 16y ago
      If they really loved their users, and their users really loved them, it surely would not be hard to have an ad-free, monthly subscription service. Look at Angry Birds, why would they even want to sell paid apps anymore with the amount of revenue they can earn from advertising within the game?
  - gte910h 16y ago
    The point isn't to allow her to also use the site (which would be alright). It's to make it so the site doesn't inadvertently disclose her location (as google buzz did for instance when it first popped up). Giving people control over when they are tagged is really the issue here (and is why my comment was posted in response to that).
- Estragon 16y ago
  It would be nice if facebook pursued the design goal you've outlined, but it would be irresponsible to interact with the facebook system as if that goal had been achieved and cemented for all time. I think the guiding principle for Mary, or any user, should be that she doesn't type anything into a web browser that she doesn't want publically known and tied to her real-life identity.
  - blahedo 16y ago
    While that may be good advice for Mary, it is infuriatingly inadequate as a response to the problem. This is like when it was discovered that passenger airbags exploded with such force[0] that they were able to decapitate short women and children (and short men, but there are fewer of them), and the response was to suggest that they not sit in the front seat anymore. When a change to a system adds a frill for a large group at the cost of making it more dangerous for a small group, glibly responding that the small group should just not use the system is inadequate. [0] The force was calibrated to protect a typical adult male who was not seatbelted. Which would be fine if not for the HUGE negative side effect.
    - gte910h 16y ago
      I don't think its even good advice for mary. The issue is that friends and family and co-workers will STILL post her identity online. She should be able to 100% control facebook's publishing of pictures in which she is identified.
  - tapp 16y ago
    > I think the guiding principle for Mary...should be that she doesn't type anything into a web browser that she doesn't want publicly known That was Eric Schmidt's answer a while back too, but I'm not sure it's adequate anymore. As PG has remarked, more and more of the tools we use to interact with the world are becoming software (and as all software is increasingly web-enabled & socialized, that's often indistinguishable from "typing it into a browser" for purposes of this discussion.) We're essentially telling people who have very legitimate reasons for wanting to protect their privacy that their other option is to become a Luddite hermit. Is that really the best we can do? It's a tough question to answer as an entrepreneur, because it probably is a much smaller opportunity, and by definition doesn't enjoy the same viral loops - - but I wish it's one that we as an industry would spend more time on.
- paul 16y ago
  Twitter needs that feature too to prevent people from Tweeting that they just saw Mary at the local store or something. If you think about your request a little more, you'll see that it's not plausible. There's a reason why people who really need to hide (e.g. witness protection) may have to change their names, cut off old connections, etc.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    It's very plausible in facebook's scenario. Allow Mary to flag "Do not show pictures with me in them to the public" in her profile. This is not the case with twitter, as you pointed out, but for facebook, it is.
    - edanm 16y ago
      Is this not possible now? Account->Privacy Settings->Customize->Pick whatever you want to customize and you can choose who to share it with. Not to mention without going into customizations, you can just choose a "blanket" level which can be that only friends can ever see anything about you.
    - gte910h 16y ago
      The feature required they don't have now is "Block pictures with me tagged in them from public view". Only "Take them off my profile page"
      - edanm 16y ago
        You're talking about pictures that other people have taken, which happen to have you in them? I understand what you're saying, but I really can't imagine this makes any kind of sense to implement. They aren't your pictures, after all, and other people have a right (probably even a legal right) to those pictures.
        gte910h 16y ago
        Yes, I'm talking about those. Facebook seems to partially agree with me on this, as it allows you to not show the tagged pics on your profile page currently with a setting. I mean, "Those arent' your tags, after all, and other people have a right to those tags".
muppetman 16y ago
You know you can do this already, right? People can tag me all they want in photos, only I see it. The control are there and they're not that hard to find (IMO of course). Is your problem that they're not there, or that they're not easy to use?
- gte910h 16y ago
  You can currently hide another users photo from public view if they tag you in them? If so, where?
  - muppetman 16y ago
    No you can't hide the photo, that'd be impossible. You can however make sure no one else sees you're tagged in it.
    - drags 16y ago
      It's not impossible, it just means that any individual would be able to censor a photo they're in from other individuals of their choice. Whether that's desirable is open to argument, but it's certainly possible.
      - cma 16y ago
        So Facebook would have a staff dedicated to verifying that you are in the picture? How would they handle identical twins?

gte910h 16y ago

I think there should be a couple use cases facebook always protects from, and proves that they aren't going to hurt the person. Here is one: "Mary is an abused spouse, beaten inches from death once upon a time by her abusive husband. She has since left him and moved to another city entirely, in hiding." Nothing in the system should allow any information about Mary to leak out. Not pictures of her, not her updates, not her level of participation in the site even. Your tagging is broken if you allow her to be tagged or captions to point her out.

cookiecaper 16y ago
I think that's very unlikely to happen. People who hadn't been abused would use it widely. Facebook, like Google, wants you to spend as much time as possible on Facebook, which means moving as much as your life into Facebook as possible and making things about others public by default, because that translates to more pageviews. Facebook makes money selling ads, so the more pages you view the more ads they sell. This is their principal motivation. Keeping things locked-down goes against both precedent that Facebook itself has set and the easy way to get more pageviews. There is probably a market for such a locked-down social network for people in witness protection or secret agents, but I don't think Facebook is very interested in the space.
- moultano 16y ago
  Your argument strikes me as knee-jerk cynicism. Facebook wants to be around for a long time. Facebook wants people to get value out of their site. This isn't a get-rich-quick scheme where the objective is to strip-mine their users. A necessary condition for Facebook making any money is that people enjoy their service. If they don't implement it, it's because they don't think it'd be valuable to enough people to be worth the opportunity cost of having people implement it, not because they think it would hurt ad revenue. It seems to be a popular sentiment that any ad-supported company hates their users, and I don't get it. It's true for spam but it isn't true for companies that want to be around for more than a year.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    If they really loved their users, and their users really loved them, it surely would not be hard to have an ad-free, monthly subscription service. Look at Angry Birds, why would they even want to sell paid apps anymore with the amount of revenue they can earn from advertising within the game?
- gte910h 16y ago
  The point isn't to allow her to also use the site (which would be alright). It's to make it so the site doesn't inadvertently disclose her location (as google buzz did for instance when it first popped up). Giving people control over when they are tagged is really the issue here (and is why my comment was posted in response to that).
Estragon 16y ago
It would be nice if facebook pursued the design goal you've outlined, but it would be irresponsible to interact with the facebook system as if that goal had been achieved and cemented for all time. I think the guiding principle for Mary, or any user, should be that she doesn't type anything into a web browser that she doesn't want publically known and tied to her real-life identity.
- blahedo 16y ago
  While that may be good advice for Mary, it is infuriatingly inadequate as a response to the problem. This is like when it was discovered that passenger airbags exploded with such force[0] that they were able to decapitate short women and children (and short men, but there are fewer of them), and the response was to suggest that they not sit in the front seat anymore. When a change to a system adds a frill for a large group at the cost of making it more dangerous for a small group, glibly responding that the small group should just not use the system is inadequate. [0] The force was calibrated to protect a typical adult male who was not seatbelted. Which would be fine if not for the HUGE negative side effect.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    I don't think its even good advice for mary. The issue is that friends and family and co-workers will STILL post her identity online. She should be able to 100% control facebook's publishing of pictures in which she is identified.
- tapp 16y ago
  > I think the guiding principle for Mary...should be that she doesn't type anything into a web browser that she doesn't want publicly known That was Eric Schmidt's answer a while back too, but I'm not sure it's adequate anymore. As PG has remarked, more and more of the tools we use to interact with the world are becoming software (and as all software is increasingly web-enabled & socialized, that's often indistinguishable from "typing it into a browser" for purposes of this discussion.) We're essentially telling people who have very legitimate reasons for wanting to protect their privacy that their other option is to become a Luddite hermit. Is that really the best we can do? It's a tough question to answer as an entrepreneur, because it probably is a much smaller opportunity, and by definition doesn't enjoy the same viral loops - - but I wish it's one that we as an industry would spend more time on.
paul 16y ago
Twitter needs that feature too to prevent people from Tweeting that they just saw Mary at the local store or something. If you think about your request a little more, you'll see that it's not plausible. There's a reason why people who really need to hide (e.g. witness protection) may have to change their names, cut off old connections, etc.
- gte910h 16y ago
  It's very plausible in facebook's scenario. Allow Mary to flag "Do not show pictures with me in them to the public" in her profile. This is not the case with twitter, as you pointed out, but for facebook, it is.
  - edanm 16y ago
    Is this not possible now? Account->Privacy Settings->Customize->Pick whatever you want to customize and you can choose who to share it with. Not to mention without going into customizations, you can just choose a "blanket" level which can be that only friends can ever see anything about you.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    The feature required they don't have now is "Block pictures with me tagged in them from public view". Only "Take them off my profile page"
    - edanm 16y ago
      You're talking about pictures that other people have taken, which happen to have you in them? I understand what you're saying, but I really can't imagine this makes any kind of sense to implement. They aren't your pictures, after all, and other people have a right (probably even a legal right) to those pictures.
      - gte910h 16y ago
        Yes, I'm talking about those. Facebook seems to partially agree with me on this, as it allows you to not show the tagged pics on your profile page currently with a setting. I mean, "Those arent' your tags, after all, and other people have a right to those tags".

muppetman 16y ago

You know you can do this already, right? People can tag me all they want in photos, only I see it. The control are there and they're not that hard to find (IMO of course). Is your problem that they're not there, or that they're not easy to use?

gte910h 16y ago
You can currently hide another users photo from public view if they tag you in them? If so, where?
- muppetman 16y ago
  No you can't hide the photo, that'd be impossible. You can however make sure no one else sees you're tagged in it.
  - drags 16y ago
    It's not impossible, it just means that any individual would be able to censor a photo they're in from other individuals of their choice. Whether that's desirable is open to argument, but it's certainly possible.
    - cma 16y ago
      So Facebook would have a staff dedicated to verifying that you are in the picture? How would they handle identical twins?